Some
people, and Bradford Plumer
seems to be one of them, are
only capable of seeing the world
in terms of THEM and US: Us (the
goodies) on the "progressive
Left" and them (the baddies) on
the "conservative Right".

To be
fair to Mr Plumer, such
behaviour is pretty much
programmed into our "prime-ape"
nature, millions of years of
evolution having adapted our
behaviour to distinguish clearly
between OUR group and OTHER
groups. Hitler's group, for
example, was the
"German race",
Jews and Slavs in particular
were OTHER groups.

Some people are too preoccupied
making MONEY (the most versatile
form of POWER) to worry about
such things. But not those on
the "progressive Left". The
irony is, they think (and no
doubt believe) that they are
morally superior, when in fact,
like those on the Right, they
are, very largely, just
following their primitive animal
nature.

In
pursuit of the Darwinian struggle
for survival and advantage, now in
the "socio-economic environment"
(rather than the natural
environment where human behaviour
evolved), those on the political
Right, following the tradition of
the aristocracy, tend to emphasize
the POWER of the sword and MONEY,
while those on the Left, in the
tradition of the priesthood ,
emphasize the POWER of the WORD,
of occupying the "moral high
ground" from where they offer
salvation (social acceptance to
those who submit to their
ideology), while damning their
rivals and
detractors as unbelievers, heathen,
capitalists, racists, or whatever.